Two sisters from Texas and a friend are missing in Mexico after they crossed the border last month to sell clothes at a flea market, US authorities said Friday.
The fate of the three women, who haven’t been heard from in about two weeks, remains a mystery and has garnered relatively little publicity.
The FBI said Friday it is aware that two sisters from Peñitas, a small border city in Texas near McAllen, and their friend have gone missing.
Peñitas Police Chief Roel Bermea said their families have been in touch with Mexican authorities, who are investigating their disappearance.
Beyond that, officials in the US and Mexico haven’t said much about their pursuit of Maritza Trinidad Perez Rios, 47; Marina Perez Rios, 48; and their friend, Dora Alicia Cervantes Saenz, 53.
US Customs and Border Protection say the three women crossed into Mexico on Feb. 24, according to Bermea. Peñitas is a few hundred feet from the Rio Grande.
The husband of one of the women spoke to her by phone while she was travelling in Mexico, the police chief said, but grew concerned when he couldn’t reach her afterwards.
“Since he couldn’t make contact over that weekend, he came in that Monday and reported it to us,” Bermea said. The three women haven’t been heard from since.
Bermea said the women were travelling in a green mid-1990s Chevy Silverado to a flea market in the city of Montemorelos, in Nuevo Leon state.
It’s about a three-hour drive from the border. Officials at the state prosecutor’s office said they have been investigating the women’s disappearance since Monday.
It comes after the case of four US citizens that were abducted in Matamoros, Mexico gained massive publicity, and in contrast with the little attention similar criminality incidents in the area have. 112,000 Mexicans are missing nationwide, but little effort is being done by authorities on their cases.
The four were travelling Friday in a white minivan with North Carolina license plates. They came under fire shortly after entering the city of Matamoros from Brownsville, at the southernmost tip of Texas near the Gulf coast, the FBI said in a statement Sunday.
“All four Americans were placed in a vehicle and taken from the scene by armed men,” the FBI said. The bureau is offering a $50,000 reward for the victims’ return and the arrest of the kidnappers.
Zalandria Brown of Florence, South Carolina, said she has been in contact with the FBI and local officials after learning that her younger brother, Zindell Brown, is one of the four victims.
“This is like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from,” she said in a phone interview. “To see a member of your family thrown in the back of a truck and dragged, it is just unbelievable.”
Zalandria Brown said her brother, who lives in Myrtle Beach, and two friends had accompanied a third friend who was going to Mexico for a tummy tuck surgery. A doctor who advertises such surgeries in Matamoros did not answer calls seeking comment.
Brown said the group was extremely close and they all made the trip in part to help split up the driving duties. They were aware of the dangers in Mexico, she added, and her brother had expressed some misgivings.
“Zindell kept saying, ‘We shouldn’t go down,’” Brown said.
A video posted to social media Friday showed men with assault rifles and tan body armour loading the four people into the bed of a white pickup in broad daylight. One was alive and sitting up, but the others seemed either dead or wounded. At least one person appeared to lift his head from the pavement before being dragged to the truck.
